Following allegations of dangerous housing and job site conditions for its workers, the Vermont Construction Company signed a preliminary agreement with labor rights nonprofit Building Dignity and Respect Standards Council in January to work toward new safety standards. The company has previously worked at Middlebury College on at least one roofing project, although the college has said it does not expect to use Vermont Construction Company in the future.
This fall the town of Colchester, Vt. repeatedly cited Vermont Construction Company for placing workers in “grossly hazardous and unsafe” conditions, issuing emergency evacuation orders for substandard buildings, as first reported by VTDigger.
The company paid over $13,000 in fines last year for lacking work site protections and providing crammed non-residential housing for workers. State and town inspectors found that the industrial buildings used as worker housing lacked required fire detection or suppression equipment, according to Seven Days. In addition, the company received three Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) violations last year for having workers at high elevations without proper fall protection measures.
The Vermont Construction Company prominently displays Middlebury College as a recent client on the main page of its website. Executive Vice President of Finance and Administration David Provost said the college has previously paid the company $45,000 for roofing work.
“Middlebury College has contracted with Vermont Construction Company subsidiary KSM once or twice over the last 6 years,” Provost wrote in an email to The Campus. “They are not a primary contractor for the college and we don’t expect to use them in the future.”
The company and the Building Dignity Council are now negotiating the next stages of implementing the worker rights program, according to Will Lambek, an organizer with Migrant Justice. The partners are working to tailor the nonprofit’s model to align with the industry conditions in Vermont.
“We are bringing together construction workers to discuss their vision for dignified conditions in work and housing and to codify that vision in the Code of Conduct,” Lambek wrote in an email to The Campus.
Once completed, Lambek said in addition to a 24-hour support line for workers, the new program will regularly audit job sites and employer-provided housing to ensure compliance with the agreed-upon standards.
“Any conditions not meeting the standards in the Code of Conduct will be swiftly investigated, and the [Building Dignity Council] will help workers and employers to take corrective action,” he added. Subcontractors who do not comply with their standards will not be allowed to work with the Vermont Construction Company, according to Migrant Justice.
On Jan. 28, Vermont Construction Company held a press conference with the Building Dignity Council, Migrant Justice and dozens of the company’s current workers, in which they heralded the new partnership as a landmark agreement in line with their mission to improve Vermont’s infrastructure.
“We wanted to build a company that would create great jobs for Vermonters and importantly, so that Vermonters could afford to live well in Vermont,” said David Richards, co-founder of Vermont Construction Company.
The accusations against the Vermont Construction Company have shone a new light on the importance of immigrants — who are a well-known part of the state’s dairy and farming workforce — to Vermont’s construction industry.
Research has shown the difficult physical toll and mental stress that migrant workers in the dairy industry face; a similar kind of hard, physical labor also affects immigrant workers subcontracted for roofing and construction projects.
“Vermont will not solve its housing crisis without migrant workers. It’s not gonna happen. These guys work their asses off and they deserve to live well in Vermont,” Richards said at the press conference.
More than 300 migrant laborers likely work in Vermont trade industries, according to Seven Days, which reported that many are hired as subcontractors, not official employees. When a company hires laborers as subcontractors, it is not responsible for verifying their legal status.
Professor of Anthropology David Stoll, who has conducted research on how Central Americans fit into the U.S. labor market, explained that subcontracting moves legal responsibility for verifying a worker’s legal status to smaller, independent subcontractors working under the main company.
“Basically, legal liability is being pushed onto multiple levels below the corporate employer, making it harder to trace,” Stoll explained.
Subcontracting is especially valuable, he said, in price-competitive industries such as meatpacking or construction. Lower labor costs from using subcontractors may help a company in these fields offer more cost-effective bids to potential clients.
“The purpose of these agreements really is to devolve legal responsibility onto somebody else. And it’s just become a very widespread mechanism for deep pocket employers — or for deep pocket institutions — to protect themselves,” Stoll said.
Lambek of Migrant Justice acknowledged the difficulty of tracking conditions for migrant workers used by companies in Vermont.
“In industries with complicated supply chains — like dairy — or labor contracting chains — like construction — it can be difficult as a consumer or client to understand the labor conditions behind the product you are consuming or the service you are receiving,” he wrote.
He also emphasized that oversight programs such as the Building Dignity Council’s model should allow clients to trust that workers are being treated fairly.
Amidst Vermont’s ongoing housing shortage, Vermont Construction Company has emerged as a major player in the state’s construction industry since its founding in 2016. Its public list of recent clients includes local real estate companies and the Champlain Housing Trust, as well as the University of Vermont (UVM). The school’s athletics department named the company as its “Official Roofing Partner” as part of a multi-year sponsorship deal, according to a press release from Sept. 11, 2024.
UVM said that the relationship between its athletics department and the company was a “marketing partnership,” rather than a testament to past job performance.
“The relationship… is not based on work done by the company for the university. Such UVM partnerships are governed by contracts that are evaluated on a regular basis,” wrote Executive Director of Communications Adam White in an email to The Campus.
Although it has not inked any sponsorship deals with construction companies, Middlebury College frequently relies on local contractors for its building projects. These include the new first year dorm set to open this summer and the new museum in the center of campus, for which the college has budgeted $50 million with a planned completion date of 2028. The college’s top five independent contractors from July 2022 to June 2023 were all construction companies, to which Middlebury paid over $20 million combined for their work, according to public tax filings for that fiscal year.
As construction companies in Vermont face new scrutiny about the safety of their workers’ housing and job sites, the Building Dignity program says it hopes to chart a new path forward for the entire industry.
“VCC is signaling to current and prospective clients that there will be transparent and verified standards in working conditions on the company’s job sites,” Lambek wrote, using an acronym for the Vermont Construction Company. “Any company who wants to do the same should follow in VCC’s footsteps and join Building Dignity.”
Ryan McElroy '25 (he/him) is the Editor in Chief.
Ryan has previously served as a Managing Editor, News Editor and Staff Writer. He is majoring in history with a minor in art history. Outside of The Campus, he is co-captain of Middlebury Mock Trial and previously worked as Head Advising Fellow for Matriculate and a research assistant in the History department. Last summer Ryan interned as a global risk analyst at a bank in Charlotte, North Carolina.
